


Rewind & Remix

by TIM



Category: Little Nightmares (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, i love wholesome friendships you can't stop me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 04:28:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29754081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TIM/pseuds/TIM
Summary: Wherein things are a little different where a Nome saves a boy who wears a paper bag over his head.*A more fleshed out version of Remix (One-Shot) where Seven decides to stick with Mono after the Hunter.
Relationships: Mono & The Runaway Kid (Little Nightmares)
Comments: 33
Kudos: 149





	1. Rescue

**Author's Note:**

> You can probably skip this chapter if you've read the one-shot. However, I've added about 4 thousand more words in this version. If you've read the first iteration and manage to read this one, please let me know if this longer chapter drags on too much? I'm not sure if I can find it in me to put out another 6k words per chapter, lol, but we'll see! i also wrote a fat portion of this on my phone, so let me know if you see any errors hahaha
> 
> Enjoy!

Seven wakes up to a breeze. The forest is a deathly quiet place, save the sounds of a sibilant shushing of leaves. He looks down at himself. A muted surprise awakens in his chest at the sight of organic grey. The feeling bubbles into distress, but he evens out to melancholy acceptance. Since leaving the Maw, he forgets more frequently that he’s lost his body. The oppressive air, claustrophobic spaces, and perpetual sway can’t remind him when he’s in the Wilderness.

The world, however, is still a dangerous place.

In the Maw, the closest thing to hostile wildlife were the leeches. Here, it is the crows that harass him. He’s too small to scare them off. They aren’t the worst part, however.

In his several weeks within the forest, he’s become quick to learn that he isn’t the only one out here. There are traps. And where there are traps, there’s a trapper.

He has watched a child snapped up and punctured into by iron jaws, has stumbled onto rotting bodies and corpses who had wandered from one cage into another.

He had hoped that escaping the Maw had meant escaping danger. He had learned quickly, however, that this was not the solace he sought, but a trade-off. One danger for another. It had struck him, then, how hopeless it all seemed, to be doomed to continue running forever. The very notion itself wore his bones weary, threatened to thin his skin to rags. Surely, this couldn't be it. Surely, there had to be more than this.

When times were bleakest, the shroud of the trees claustrophobic, he thought to toss himself into the leafy carpet of the forest floor; tempt the traps that lied underneath. Without body, without hope, what was left for him?

The Nomes and their companionship are enough to keep him grounded from complete despair, a tether that kept him to the harbor against the natural pull of waves that threatened to lull him away.

Like himself, without captor or slave driver, the Nomes had wandered off the Maw and into the Wilderness. They congregate to odd landmarks that riddle the woods. Pseudo-buildings with trees that wind into their windows. Rocks and caves. Shrines with markings that are clearly in a language that isn't Japanese, humming with energy that both enchants and frightens him.

Though the Maw would do well to leave the Nomes to maintenance work, the Wilderness was not so kind. With the traps abound, Seven thought the forest, though seemingly more leisure, to be more indiscriminate. Unsuspecting and clumsy, they would waddle over trip wires, be snared and flung into the air by their ankles or gobbled up by the hungry cages suspended and hidden in the leaves of trees. Once they are victim to these things, Seven never sees them again. Despite what the rotting, neglected corpses of some of the traps suggested, there was someone out there collecting their prizes, and Seven intended on finding who that someone was and where they were taking his friends. 

With a quiet grunt, he pushes himself up. The grass looms over him. The fronds are soft, and they tickle his ashen skin. In another life, it would have been a source of amusement. Now, it serves as a smokescreen. He can't see beyond several inches in front of him and it's not a wonder why his companions would become victims of deadly capture.

His heartbeat drums in his ears as he cautiously pushes through the blades. He thinks he's being careful, but he's abruptly proven wrong when he trips over a rock and tumbles into a miniature clearing.

Except, it's not a clearing. It's a bit like a crater. More of an impression, with muddy, curling dirt edges and water filling in indentations.

Dread twists within him as he recognizes it as a bootprint. Another makes itself known just a little further ahead, followed by another.

This is a comically stupid and terrible idea. He should stop, now. Turn back.

As he trembles in the mud, he thinks of the shadows cast in firelight, child-figures on the floor connected to Nome bodies. A different kind of melancholy warmth that had befallen them as they worked the engine. The emptiness when he regards running. Always running. Treading water, going nowhere and muscles burning until a hand rises ominously from underneath.

No, he thinks. He clenches his hands and stumbles out of the muck that threatens to sunction onto him. Phantom memories of leeches briefly flash in his mind, and his struggle increases four fold. He grunts, panicked, and the noise translates into the garble of Nome noise. He pops free, flying up and over the rim. Half his body is painted muddy. He breathes heavily, trembling from the exertion.

Stupid. This was stupid. But, Seven didn't have much. He wouldn't let his friends be taken from him any longer. He had to find them.

\--

The journey is perilous, but Seven has a little knowledge on navigating terrors, and has the caution to spot the tripwires and the resourcefulness to toss pinecones into suspicious seas of dead leaves. The last one never ceases to make him flinch. They looked so much like hungry jaws, snapping at empty air like the masses on the Maw when a child nearly escapes crossing their paths. The memory invokes fear, and would have brought a stinging warmth to his eyes. It takes him a few seconds to collect himself after these portions.

The trail leads to a cabin. It looms ominously. Dark smoke swirls free from a chimney. The dim light that pours from its windows resembled eyes, and he could have sworn he saw it seethe and breathe as it groaned to a wind. 

Cages are strewn and stacked about everywhere. Seven almost thinks he's on the Maw again. He expects sniffling and cowering children in the shadows of the traps. He checks them, each one, in case there are. His heart sinks as each reveals emptiness. No Nomes, no kids. Nothing living. Had these been occupied before and he was too late?

He drops to the floor after climbing one particularly tall stack and hovers half in the cage tower's shadow as he warily regards the home. He hated this. If they get back alive, he was going to lecture his friends until their dumb Nomey heads were sagging from all the gibberish noise he had to say. The thought helps him bolster his courage, and he pushes on. He hops up on the steps of the porch. He expects it to creak, but thankfully his body's so light, he might as well be paper to it. Encouraged, he climbs to the patio.

There's an open window, but as he regards it, Seven notes that it's too high a jump for him in this body. He skitters around, seeking anything to serve as an intermediary step. On the other end of the porch creaks a rocking chair. He tries to pull it from the side to avoid being rocked over, but it only jerks, wooden feet groaning against wooden boards. He tries again, but manages to yank it into an uneven dent. 

Seven groans, a jittery noise, in frustration. He has half the mind to shove the chair into a rocking, when he notices between its wooden braces is a small hole into the crawl space underneath the house. It would have been too big for a child. For the first time since being turned, Seven saw the silver lining to his new form.

He squeezes himself through and tumbles in. It's beyond dark, just like the Maw, and he suddenly misses his flashlight. He was lucky, to be a nome meant better senses in the dark than most. Today was a surprising amount of silver linings.

Something skitters. Seven sees a glint of oily fur. He recoils, hastily presses himself against the wall. There’s a screeching squeal and the adrenaline explodes. Seven dives to the floor as a snarling rat slams into the wall where he’d just been standing. Heart racing, he scrambles to his feet and runs.

Claws scratching against wood resound behind him. The scrabbling sound of the creature gaining ground on him pounds to louder volumes. He ducks and slides beneath pipes, but he can hear from the clicking sound of claws that this only minorly inconveniences his chaser.

Seven trips with a cry. Everything slows. As he goes tumbling head over heels, he sees a hunger-gleaming eye. This is where he dies, in the dark, alone, and torn into by a hungry predator. Stupid. Stupid! He might as well have stayed in the Maw!

His momentum carries him, and he tumbles into a small, open pipe. His mind is blank. Terror and instincts tear his body forward. A claw nearly clips him by a hair.

Seven hyperventilates, staring as the creature struggles to fit itself beyond its arm through the pipe. It snarls, dragging its claws against the rusted metal. He shrinks back as the world around him rattles, clamors and screeches. He retreats further backwards where his back hits the wall where the pipe recedes upwards.

There’s only his breathing as he curls in on himself. His body effuses with warmth as he quivers with barely contained tears that have no means of manifesting.

The claw continues to scrape around, angry and menacing. Seven doesn’t notice when the quaking begins to settle, or when the claw simply stops, slips away, and is briefly replaced by a beady, black eye. He isn’t sure how long he sits there, seeking breath, and wishing himself away. It only dimly registers in him that he can hear the creature scampering away.

He stays in the dark hole he’s managed to stumble into when silence finally falls. It’s the calm after the storm, and he feels empty and pliant for it.

The floorboards groan and creak. Seven looks up where light filters through a grate and down the pipe. Something is upstairs.

Instinctively, he stills. Nothing happens - the silence stretches.

The Hunter’s footsteps are more sagging wood moaning than actual steps. Seven jumps when they resound again, travelling from directly above him to… elsewhere. They grow distant, quiet. Seven shudders an inhale.

He needed to find his friends and leave quickly. He can’t stay here any longer than he needs to.

Mustering his courage, he grips the ledges where the pipe has been bolted to another pipe and climbs.

He meets the vent on top with a cautious palm, pushing it open with a quiet grunt before pulling himself through. He’s next to a decrepit rug that curls at its edges. Light barely reaches him, concentrating more further up ahead in a vignette-like fashion. Naturally, Seven looks there and nausea curls and churns inside him as he stares at the Kitchen in front of him.

Despite himself, he carefully stalks forward. He jumps, catching a decorative ledge, and climbs from ledge to broken ledge. He catches a handle, then onto the countertop. He lifts himself up.

Seven stares blankly at the cookware.

Blood and viscera paints its interior and around it, looking more like a children’s wild artistic endeavor than anything savory. There’s a grey, paper foot. A hand. There’s a wilted cone, but no neck, no body.

He turns to look away, his body rippling with repulsion and a need to vomit. The next sight refuses him. Bodies are stuffed in the fridge which has been left ajar.

Seven cries out as he recoils off the island. The sound of creaking floorboards return, and a part of him can’t help but entertain the idea of capture to join his companions. This was all for nothing. It’d all been for nothing. From one nightmare into another, this had been their fate.

Disoriented by grief, he stumbles to a new vent seated next to the sink. Bleary and distraught, he follows the metal halls and their twists and turns blindly. His inattention soon costs him, however, as tumbles down and lands with a clang.

Seven doesn’t move, sniffling. He doesn’t think he can bear to. Why couldn’t everything just stop? He should’ve remained where he stood before he fell. It might’ve been better for this nightmare to simply end.

His hopelessness mires and nearly drowns him - but the spell is briefly broken by a gentle hum. The Nome looks up. He stares at a cold, weak light casted between a grate some feet away. Was that… Was that somebody alive? His cynicism gets the better of him - who in their right mind would be humming in a place like this? Nobody sane, certainly.

He’d clench his jaws. He considers leaving it be. Yet, something in him urged him to check. A desperate plea to prove that this trip hadn’t been for nothing. Slowly, he gets to his feet.

\--

Seven had expected, well he doesn’t know what he’d expected. A crazy person. Now that his brain wasn’t bombarded with terror and grief, he supposes even a radio would have made sense. And if it  _ were _ some kid lacking situational awareness, he supposed he would have expected them in the corner locked up in a cage.

In the shadow of the vent, Seven is surprised to see a child sitting in the open center of a room, clutching a teddy bear tightly to their chest. While he couldn’t discern the sanity of the kid, they were wearing a paper bag with eye-holes over their head. It’s a peculiar sight.

Seven tries the bars of the grate, and the vent squeaks. The child jerks its attention to him. A wary tension lines their shoulders, a pale hand to the ground as they push themselves to a crouch. They’re ready to dart. Maybe the kid had some sense of self-preservation after all.

Seven doesn’t know what to do. He stands with the grate between his palms, and the kid just stares. There seems to be a moment where the kid’s caution turns to curiosity as their shoulders loosen, and a hand begins to reach forward - but the effect turns like a switch flipped as the floor shakes to the slow, pounding footsteps of the Hunter.

The kid’s head snaps to the door where the handle is slowly turning. And that’s when the kid decides. They sprint to where Seven is, and the action startles him back into the vent.

His gut twists and wrings, and Seven, despite himself, hesitates as the kid manages to get to the bars. There’s a desperate grunt as they tug - and Seven realizes that they can’t do this alone. He scrambles forward. His clumsy Nome body trips, and he lands into the bars jarred and disoriented. Pushing through, he shoves, and the vent gate opens with a screech. Paper-bag kid scrambles in, and the gate clatters down.

The door opens, and there’s a stillness threaded with the harsh breathing of the kid besides him. They both jump as a hand slams onto the door, a guttural roar of anger bellowing from the Hunter. He patrols the room, peaks underneath the table, rummages through the empty cages. A noise of frustration as he circles once again.

It feels like an eternity as he does this.

Seven keeps his eyes fixed on the Hunter who paces animalistically through the domain.  _ Please don’t see us.  _ He prays it in repeat, keeps it on loop such that it numbs his mind and  _ he _ feels like he’ll go crazy.

The air is thick, tight, and heavy as the man stops. Another eternity could have passed by and Seven would have been none the wiser. Finally, the Hunter turns. A raucous cacophony echoes and follows after him. He’s still looking for his missing quarry.

Seven looks over to the kid, who looks back at him with a curious tilt of a paper head. He wonders if they’re actually crazy, or maybe disfigured. Why else would you hide your head? The only people he's seen hide their faces have been adults, and the association immediately hems out a cautious distrust.

He quickly moves on from the thought. He had been hoping to find his friends. He doesn’t mind that he helped  _ someone _ along the way. A sadness fills him at the thought of their fate in the stew he’d seen upstairs, but he thinks that this is worth it. Seven extends his hand and tries to ignore the dissonance in seeing grey.

The kid looks at it, and then slowly accepts it. He tries to help the kid up, but they mostly help themselves up and leave little weight to Seven’s assistance. He figures the kid thinks he’s not very strong, or he’s prideful and independent. To the former, Seven would snort at. He’d just helped them open the vent, thank you very much.

A heartbeat ticks by. The kid is still staring at him. Seven finds it unnerving. Lots of kids are pretty open and expressive. Except the girl in the yellow jacket. She’d been difficult to read - her face seeming so impassive hidden underneath the shadow of her hood. Bag-head is similar, with only non-expressive eye-holes to go off from. Finally, they speak, and from the pitch of the voice, Seven realizes that this is a boy.

“What are you?” He rasps.

Mono hadn’t been sure what to make of the creature that had helped him escape. It looked… abnormal, but its small stature was seemingly harmless-looking. Between the Hunter and it, he had a choice and a gamble. He’d tried the Vent many times himself, his strength useless against its gravity. He still couldn’t quite believe he’d finally managed in with the help of this creature, having expected it to run as any animal would want to do.

It simply stands there. Mono thinks it’s looking at him, but he isn’t sure. Can it even see? Where are its eyes? He frowns, rasps again, “Can you talk?”

Its head shakes and Mono inhales thoughtfully. Well, he's not sure what he expected, but it does seem that it could understand him. “Thank you…” He trails off, “For helping me.”

The Nome nods. It lifts its hand, as though pointing back into the depths of the vent. Mono hesitates. “Is that the way out?” It nods again, and reaches for his hand. The creatures feels paper-y, yet organic. Mono isn’t sure how to feel about that, but there’s a relief in being able to trust and rely on something else. How much? He isn’t sure, but he knows that he owes this Nome his life and that’s enough of an argument to leverage some trust.

As the creature pulls forward, Mono allows himself to be lead. He slows his longer limbs to benefit of the more frantic, smaller pace of his newfound companion.

The vents are disorienting. They twist and turn in a convoluted fashion, and Mono takes note that the Nome has a tendency to pause and gesture for him to wait as it waddles ahead to scout. Sometimes he hears the giant stepping through the house. Wherever the Hunter went, the entire house announced it as though his very footsteps harmed it.

He begins to doubt that the Nome knows where it’s going (they’ve backtracked a few times) when he sees the green color of foliage peeking through the vent grate ahead. Excitement gets the better of him, unintentionally tugging the Nome into a stumble as he strides eagerly to the exit. He slows to look down at the creature that had managed to lead them both out there, breathlessly whispering, “We made it.”

The Nome emits a noise and raises its hand into a thumbs up.

Mono slips his hand around the cool metal of the grate. He jerks it forward, but it groans and yields little. He chews the inside of his cheek, frustrated at the thought of yet another escape being thwarted once again by heavy grates. A body presses up against him, and he looks down to see the Nome similarly bracing itself against it. Realizing its intentions, Mono shoves against the grate again.

Their shared effort seems to be the special ingredient to success. The vent, despite its guttural protestations, finally gives. The two of them pop out into the otherside --  _ outside _ \-- when the resistance vanishes. Mono looks to the Nome with a hidden, celebratory grin when he notices that their escape hadn’t gone unnoticed. He grabs the Nome by its hand and yanks it forward just as a flash of mangled fur replaces where it once sat.

A rat snarls as it skids through the mud and bog. Mono scrambles to his feet, stumbling when the muck attempts to keep its claim on him. He yelps as he dodges yet another leap from the Rat, jerking the Nome close to his chest. He bolts forward, managing to briefly spare himself a set of teeth into his arms as the lunges once more and manages to land head-first into a crate.

With this much noise, the Hunter would be sure to investigate.

Cursing, Mono continues to run with the Nome in tow. His ears are filled with a din, between his terror-fueled heartbeat, the rustling of his bag, and the rat hissing and screeching after them. He dives underneath a fallen log, and continues to run.

There’s only a blind need to escape. Anything unnecessary filters out. Obstacle, solution. Keep running. He feels a brief tug at his arms - ignores it until it becomes a furious tapping. Mono glances down at the Nome pointing at something to the right. He glances over. There’s an axe lodged into a tree stump.

The rat makes for another charge. Mono dives, and the rotting crate it lands into collapses in on itself. He sets the Nome down that’s more dropping than anything of care, and leaps up to grab the axe’s handle. His free hanging body weight is enough to set it free. He falls as it pops out of its prison. Wasting no time, he grips its shaft and turns. He lifts and slams down at a blur of black and grey. There’s screaming, and the copper taste of blood as the rat leaps back.

A severed tail lies limply in front of him. The rat had noticed Mono’s new set of teeth and had swirled back - but not quick enough.

It growls at him, circling with erratic, but measured steps. Mono breathes heavily, winding back a new shot.

It darts forward, but Mono doesn’t allow it an opportunity. He slams forward once again, and the rat is sent backwards. They follow this rhythm, back and forth, to the sound of the animal’s frothing snarls. He hears the rustle of leaves to his left, accompanied by a clap. Mono flits his gaze, sees the Nome gesturing over with arms in the air. He sees the glint of iron jaws.

Understanding flickers into Mono. The rat sees his attention split and lunges again. Mono ducks. He swings forward - it leaps back. He does it again, this time with a shout of effort - and the rat flies backwards with a sneering hiss. Mono sucks in a breath. He adjusts his grip, tightens it, and rears it back. He snaps it forward again, vicious in the motion. The head slices into the dirt and the rat --

The noise clamors together - a scream, a mechanism squealing awake, metal teeth clanging as their jaws snap together and the sound of bones crunching. A death gargle escapes the mangled fur and flesh. Muscle drips and sags as the life slips from it. 

Mono stares, breathing ragged and harsh. The sound of rustling grass alerts him and he looks up to see the Nome inching out from the fronds. Behind it, an imprint. It must’ve fallen backwards as the rat did.

Mono inhales, mindfully unworking the tension in his fingers and releasing the axe’s handle. He crouches down, extending a hand. “Safe,” He murmurs. The Nome hesitates, still hidden behind a few blades. A heartbeat ticks by. Mono thinks he’s about to be rejected when the Nome proves him wrong, waddling forward and placing its hand in his. Something akin to relief settles in him.

_ Safe _ was only brief, however. The house behind him creaks and shudders. Mono knows who’s coming - he grabs the Nome and dashes into the tall grass.

\--

They manage, somehow, to escape the attention of the Hunter. For once in Seven’s life, he’s glad that the grass is tall and obscuring in the Wilderness. There’s a heart stopping moment when a crow is startled free, the sudden lurch of a lantern’s light. Stillness. Another lurch. Seven and the boy crawl further.

Eventually, they slip through a tangle of gnarled roots of a tree. The Hunter is still around and it’s imperative to remain cautious and quiet, but Mono reckons that the man was now some ways off. He releases the Nome’s hand, and stands a little comfortably. He looks around, attention less tunnel-visioned and more leisurely observant.

A shelter rests nearby, with cut wood logs stacked within. More cages and traps hang and lean against it. A little ways ahead lies a shed amongst the company of crates. They may have made some distance from the cabin, but they were still well within the Hunter’s homestead. There’s a small tug on his jacket. Mono looks over to the Nome who points to a suspended cage hanging from a tree.

He tilts his head questioningly as he allows the Nome to pull him towards the trunk. It points again at the cage. Mono stews quietly in thought.

“Something up there?” The Nome nods its head, planting both its hands against the tree bark as it tilted its head to regard the cage. Mono follows its gaze and sees a pale finger just barely poking out from between the bars. He furrows his brows, tries to whisper-yell the best he can, “Hey!”

The finger twitches. Mono blinks. Somebody alive? He looks over to his companion who seems to be invigorated by this, waddling furiously over to a nearby crate and shoving with all its might to the tree’s direction. Mono hurries over and slips his fingers into the gaps between the wood.

They drag the crate to the tree’s bark. It’s easier with a helping hand, Mono thinks. It’s been a while since he’s ever had one. They climb the box and then the tree, leaping to the lowest hanging branch, and into the leaves. Reaching the rope suspending the cage, Mono looks around with one hand gently placed atop it. It’s a fibrous texture and doesn’t give way to his touch. It’s taut. Scanning the area, he’s disappointed to see that there isn’t another axe. Given this is where the Hunter kept his logs, it would have been expected. 

The Nome seems to have an idea, however, as it jumps from the branch atop of the cage. It gestures Mono over. Mono blinks, then realizes it intends on using their combined weight to set it free. He purses his lips, looking down at the rope once more. With nothing to cut it with, except maybe teeth, he decides the Nome’s idea was at least worth trying. He leaps. A branch crackles as the cage shudders and drops a foot. A good sign if they wanted to shake this free.

The Nome starts jumping. The cage bobs, but not by much.

Mono inhales as he looks down to the ground beneath them. He grimaces and looks to the Nome besides him. “It’ll make a lot of noise,” He whispers. The Nome slows, processing his words, but it shakes its head. It jumps again, and stares at Mono to join him.

Mono gnaws on the inside of his cheek. This was a terrible idea, but he didn’t want to dissuade his current company. In some ways, he appreciated its stubbornness as a reflection of his own. He breathes in again, and gets to his feet.

They jump. The branch groans, punctuated with the sound of cracks. Mono reaches for the Nome’s hand, grips it as he jumps again. This time, there’s only a single crack, and it’s more like a crash. Mono doesn’t have much time to process it as they begin to free-fall along with the cage. Birds fly free from the trees with startled cries as they crashland to the forest floor.

The door squeals open, its cage deformed from impact.

Mono’s stomach sinks at the sight of a child’s corpse. Maggots swarm and spill from its wrists where the hand convulses with more maggots underneath. He looks away with a sharp intake of breath. The Nome quickly realizes this too, its cone head seeming to sag as it leans away from the sight. Mono loops his hand into its. He stills as a thundering seems to resound in the distance. It’s the voice of foliage cracking, hasty feet. The Hunter.

Eyes widening, Mono gets to his feet and throws both himself and the Nome behind their crate as a gunshot blasts through the air. Their temporary wooden shelter shatters into splinters. Mono grabs the Nome’s hand again, sprinting ever forward. He barely manages to get behind another crate when it, too, splinters into oblivion.

The placement of the crates herd them hurling towards the shed. As it bears ever closer, his eyes catch onto the gleam of a firearm mounted on its wall.

Another bang. His ears are ringing. Mono throws himself through the open door. 

\--

Seven slams his body onto the door. It closes, and he hauls the deadlock into place. He braces himself against their only barrier between death, but his body weight is nearly nothing, and he almost flies off as the Hunter knocks his shoulder into it. The wood bends and cracks. He had been foolishly desperate in thinking someone was in that cage.

The Hunter throws his body again into the door. Splinters fly free. Seven frantically looks around, wondering where the hell bag-boy went when he hears a crashing thud behind him. Looking over his shoulder, he sees bag-boy, disoriented, staggering up to his feet. Besides him… A gun!

He’d widen his eyes if he had any. Bag-boy reaches for it, but it’s too heavy and the aim is swaying. Seven braces himself as he feels the door splinter one last time and sends him forward. He scrambles next to Bag-boy, throws his arms around the firearm and helps steady its aim.

There’s only a brief second to realize that he’s staring down at the barrel of another gun.

The world explodes as the two of them are knocked back. The muzzle is steaming and it threatens to sear skin. Seven drags himself away from them. He hears the boy’s ragged breathing besides him. He looks up, vision bleary, at the blasted hole in the door. He grimaces, shudders. There’s a body on the other side of that.

When he turns back, he sees that Mono also is staring. It’s unnerving, like he’s fixating blankly. It’s hard to read him with that bag of his, but Seven then notices that there’s a shaking to his hands. 

Right, this isn’t that yellow-jacketed girl.

Seven gently reaches for his hand. This seems to snap the boy back to reality as he jumps and looks down at him. There’s a shuddering inhale. “Sorry. Thanks.” With his free hand, he grips his bag. It must steel him, because he turns around and starts climbing the box. At the top, he turns around again, and positions his hands expectantly to help Seven up to reach the window.

He’s not sure why he’s surprised when they’ve been mutually helping each other out this entire time. Maybe he’s still processing their newfound near-death experience. But he’s glad for the other’s initiative, and takes up on the offer. On the top, he reaches down to pull the boy up and they tumble down onto the other side.

Seven stares at the pale, open water that meets them. Dread fills in the pit of his stomach with the memories of the Maw.

He watches the boy tread forward, finding a broken door washed ashore. He begins to push, but there isn’t a lot of leeway. He grunts. It’s heavy. Seven skitters forward to help, but pauses. He turns to look back to the treeline of the Wilderness. His friends have been made to stew, despite all their efforts to evade that specific fate. He wonders if this boy would have fit well with the rest of the Nomes, had they met prior, in another world.

As he looks back to the water, he grimaces. He's partial to the land. With the main menace of the woods now dead, it could be argued that it was safer to stay here. Wherever this boy is trying to go, Seven is certain that the unknown was more likely to host another set of monsters. He stands, conflicted, uncertain how to communicate with the boy that it may be safer to stay.

Carefully, he tugs at the boy’s sleeve. When the boy stops his efforts to look at him, Seven gently places a hand over his and points to the trees. Desperately, he wants to say “Safe”, but this cursed body has no way of saying anything.

The boy’s bag tilts to follow his pointing. There’s a hope that starts in his heart, but it’s squashed as the other shakes his head.

“I can’t.”

_ Why? _

He tugs a little more urgently as the boy restarts his efforts with more vigor.  _ Get away from the water. There’s nothing good there. _

The boy releases a frustrated breath, tugging his hand away from Seven and sags against the door. Seven points again at the treeline.  _ It’s safe. _

There’s a contemplative silence. Seven would hold his breath.

“Do you… want to head back?”

Seven nods and tugs on the boy’s sleeve.

“... With me?”

Another nod.

There’s silence. It’s long, and tender, filled with the sound of gentle waves. He hears the boy breathe.

“I… I can’t.” An exhale, short, frustrated. Seven realizes he’s having trouble articulating. “I need to go this way.”

_ Why? _ He wants to push. What’s out there that’s more important that  _ assured  _ safety? It was something he’d been seeking for so long, and now that it’s here, he’s watching this boy toss it away.  _ For what? _

Seven’s almost mad. It’s - It’s a  _ waste _ .

Mono watches the Nome seeming to shake. There’s tension in its stance, it’s hands seem to grip into a fist. He connects the dots. It’s upset.

He doesn’t know how to explain without sounding crazy. There’s something  _ there _ . Something is calling to him. His entire being demands that he go  _ East _ and each time he steps towards it, he feels that he’s getting closer. And his body tells him,  _ you’re one step closer than the last _ ,  _ why not keep going? You might as well. It’s one less step between you and the goal. _ And that obsessive energy feeds in on itself every time he gives into it.

He’s tried to ignore it before. But it’d keep him awake, haunting him in dreams and static whispers on the fringes of wakefulness and sleep. This was something he couldn’t escape without satiating it. 

In some ways, he’s always been like this. Single-minded, and unable to tear away once his mind had decided. Maybe this is why he'd found himself trapped in the Hunter's basement.

As the Nome points to the treeline yet again, he feels guilt. He feels disappointment that this is where they’ll part, but he’s also touched that the Nome seems to want to stay together.

“You can head back,” he tries to encourage through his wispy voice, “Without… without the Hunter, it’s safer.” Mono inhales. The air is cold and misty. “Maybe after I finish this… I can come back. And maybe we’ll meet again.”

He hopes they can, anyway.

Seven tries to process this. He’s even more mad knowing that the boy  _ knows _ it’s safer. Hearing him entertain the idea of coming back, however, staunches his anger. It must be important, he concludes slowly, it must be. Their very meeting had been Seven foregoing obvious dangers for the sake of rescue. He doesn’t know if the boy is doing this to  _ save anybody _ , but it must be important enough to abandon safety.

Seven glances briefly to the treeline over his shoulder. His friends were gone. He looks over to the boy. A stranger, with an even stranger taste in head gear, and also a possible death wish. But who was he to judge? A nome who snuck into a Monster's den? 

Cautiously, he waddles forward. His feet sink into the sand as he begins to push on the door.

Understanding sinks into Mono quickly, and the boy follows the Nome’s actions. The wood breaks free from the confines of the beach. It lurches into freedom, and begins to drift forward.

Seven hastens forward and hoists himself up onto it, turning to extend a hand to the boy who stands with what he assumes is surprise. There's a pause, but the boy moves and grabs his hand. The makeshift raft bobs into the water under the new addition's weight. Uneasiness filters into him. He used to enjoy swimming, but it's been since ruined for him. He huddles closer to the boy who has taken a seat for himself, edging away from where wood gave way to expanse and danger.

Mono tenses at the action, but it melts away quickly. Watching the Nome press itself into him, he realizes that it held no fondness for the water. Something akin to thankfulness seeps into his bones as he realizes further that the Nome had come with him despite this. Gingerly, he takes the Nome's hand into his and squeezes. As the mist engulfs them and the water laps calmly against their raft, Mono gently fills the air with a hum. 


	2. The Pale City

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Pale City is a lifeless husk... Or is it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yo! Okay, some of this is really rushed. Other parts, done with care but possibly with too much exposition, lol. Future chapters probably won't be nearly 11k words long or so god help me. I overshot my initial goal way too much without meaning to, haha. I'm, like, fed by all your comments, guys, and I really appreciate all your feedback, support, and curiosity. It's literally the only source of dopamine that's keeping me going through school and I'd appreciate seeing y'all's reactions again (not to like, totally beg, but oh my god this quarter has been soul sucking).  
> lsdjfs, ok, enough blathering from me!
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

There's a jolt as the raft scrapes itself onto land. Seven startles awake. He’d drifted off, lulled to a calm sleep with the boy’s gentle humming. For the first time in a long time, he’d dreamt of something beyond certain death and accusatory stares. It’d been something odd and abstract -- television sets revealing themselves half drowned in water. Some flickered, sputtering into life as a shadow drew near. They came and went, the mist veiling and unveiling as he pressed forward.

As he shifts back into awareness, he tenses to the hushed sound of water lapping hungrily behind him. Now, upon land, he enthusiastically pulls at the boy’s hand to the shore. The boy doesn’t move, stirring now, and Seven realizes that he’d been asleep also.

Eye holes regard him curiously, but then shift and tilt upwards to something beyond him. Seven follows his gaze. A mammoth wall of buildings, warped and wilted, looming. In their distortions, they threatened to spill over and collapse. Seven’s hand goes slack, releasing the boy’s.

There’s a sound behind him, thuds as the boy pushes himself up and takes a few steps forward. His head is still oriented to the towering buildings when Seven glances back at him. He releases a garbled noise and relaxes when their gaze refocuses on him.

_What now?_

Mono still can't quite discern when the Nome is looking at him. But he thinks he can read the situation enough as he takes its hand and trades wooden platform for sand. The pull within him purs. His gut affirms that this is the way forward. _He needs to keep going._

There's a television set shattered ahead… and a ghostly, wispy thing flickering in front of it. Mono slows, regards it with a healthy, cautious curiosity. When he stills to a stop, the Nome tugs on his hand. He looks down to a questioning tilt of a cone head and another tug as if asking why he'd stopped. Mono pauses, looking back to the wisp that remained like an after-image imprinted on reality.

Could the Nome not see it?

His breath stutters at the thought.

The sibilant sound of static trickles into his mind. Mono removes his hand from the Nome and approaches the shadow. He’s not sure what’s pounding harder, his head or his heart, as the sound surges into a drumming roar. He swears he hears something _whispering_ through it, fuzzed and distorted like a radio frequency struggling to pinpoint its station.

Light explodes and Mono is sent to a stagger, gripping his head. Hot tears prickle at his eyes as a great despair hollows him out in the heart and a void seems to open up deep inside him.

Behind him, Seven had watched the boy drawn to the television set, approaching it carefully as though it were a skittish animal. Suddenly the boy folds over, flickering into black and white, snf it sends him running. His hand grazes the boy’s coat, but it screams at his touch with an electric shock that sends him flying back. Gaze flitting back to the boy, his distraught is coaxed only slightly when he looks up to see color returning.

Mono breathes haggardly. Despite the pain, he’d managed to maintain his stand with trembling legs. He blinks rapidly as he attempts to reorient himself, shoves a hand beneath his bag to scrub away the tears. He shudders. Remembering that he wasn’t alone, he throws a glance over his shoulder to a sagging Nome in the sand.

“Are you okay?” He croaks. His voice is wet and thick. He thinks he feels static hissing within it and has to stamp down the temptation to try and cough it out. There’s a whispering in his mind, moaning a lonesome wail, and Mono almost misses the Nome's small nod. He sucks in a breath, stumbling through detangling himself from the sudden onset of despair. “Sorry.”

He doesn’t ask if it’d _seen_ it, because he’s not sure if he can handle the implication of a _no_.

He swallows unevenly, breathes, “Sorry.” _I must look crazy to you._ He extends his hand, and sags to a crushing relief when the Nome accepts it. He squeezes the Nome’s hand, and shoves his sleeve beneath his bag one last time.

Whatever the hell that'd been about, Mono isn't sure. The Nome must be bewildered moreso, and he grimaces with a self-conscious hunch. He bites his inner cheek to keep himself from glancing back at the set. It had felt… right. Despite the grief that had flooded him, a twinge of peace had murmured through the overwhelming static crescendo.

He dithers in self-doubt, but the _pull_ refuses him the reprieve. As he turns his attention back to the wall of buildings, his gut responds in a resolute fashion and his will steels. _Keep going, you can't stop. Another step._

That's right, he thinks. One step after the other. A rhythmic mantra that's served him thus far.

Mono tightens his grip on the Nome's hand and whispers, “Let’s go.”

There is a lonely light that shines like a beacon, its yellow coloration a bold rebellion of warmth to the world’s cool palette. Seven had thought it was the obvious direction to be drawn to, not the odd television draped amongst the cold tones that steeped the rest of the world. He watches his companion with a disquieted concern as, underneath the light, Mono latches onto a door handle.

Did they need to stop? Was he following a crazy person after all?

Seven holds his breath as the door creaks open with an eerie welcome.

…

The city sprawls, labyrinth-like. With an exterior so large and towering, Seven had expected something like the Maw behind it. Something alive. Something churning with perpetual busy-bodies such that the air threatened to suffocate on its own residual steam. He expected, as they broached the barrier, a teeming world that sagged underneath the weight of its own inhabitants, pulsating with an unrelenting hum of action like a monstrous heartbeat.

The Pale City, however, is nothing like that.

Where even the Maw’s waterlogged and frigid, damp underbelly seemed fraught with constant attention and patrols, the city was empty. It was desolate. If there were a word that came with his first impression it was… _Isolation_.

There are hints of what it used to be. They reveal themselves as he and the boy climb up gutters and onto the escape hatches. The empty apartments that they step into fill him with a pang as he sights the floral print on the walls. The set pieces that suggested the personalities that used to live there are dull colored, but Seven can tell that they used to be brightly saturated and seemingly innocent. A mint colored stove, a boxset of crayons opened invitingly on a coffee table. There are more and more of these as they step from apartment to apartment.

His attention is often possessed by these details. His footsteps slow, his eyes wandering. It isn’t until he hears a “pst” and sees a pale hand beckoning that he realizes that his companion is pushing ahead with a less relenting, and non-distracted speed. The boy waits at the edge of a window, its pane cracked barely open.

He waddles with a speedy pace to make up for the lost distance, but can’t help a final glance over his shoulder. A tomb, he realizes. To whom they belonged to, he doesn’t know, but he can imagine the many families that might’ve once lived here. He feels a sense of loss for these people he doesn’t know. They could’ve been as monstrous as everything else for all he knew, but he grieves for these lost moments of normalcy.

The boy waits, allowing him to wiggle his way through the crack first. It's a smoother affair than the bag-boy's, who grunts as his larger body necessitates a tighter squeeze. Seven grabs his hand, feet gripping into the chilly fire escape metal as he tries to help tug him through.

The boy manages out, and Seven breathes in the air gratefully. Besides him, he hears the wrinkle of the boy’s paper bag as a breeze slips through them.

It’s like stepping into another world, without all the morose grey and stagnant dust where time seemed to have stilled, but it’s equally forgotten and abandoned. The thematic loneliness persists. Posters plaster the walls with a former activity that betrays their current listless and soggy state. As he takes in the unfeeling, bending monuments that generate the skyline, Seven is sure the city resembled his former hellscape once upon a time -- but what laid here now was a corpse profuse with lonely melancholy. A pale, empty husk wherein all life had been vacuumed from it.

He loops his hand in the boy’s. The boy squeezes back.

Their sight-seeing is made brief as the boy’s attention is brought to the ladder next to them, jittering with a rankled rattle to another gust. He moves, and Seven follows. They knock the fire escape ladder loose. It collapses with an anguished squeal and the both of them instinctually crouch with a grimace. They wait for the sound of… something. Anything.

If a tree falls down in the forest with nobody to hear it, does it make a sound?

Only the wind humming through the maze of buildings answers them. Seven hears the boy inhale next to him as he pushes himself up. He's quick to do the same, and follows the clamber down the rusted rungs.

It's more depressing in the streets, where light fails to sink low enough to touch the tarmac and concrete. It's a world of somber shadow.

Seven notes that there are empty clothes that are draped upon odd places. There had been a bit of that in the apartments, too. They looked staged, like the Hunter’s stuffed family, left dangling in a morbid mimicry of where a person might have sat or might have stood, pre-occupied in the midst of what might have been their life. It unnerves him. It’s almost as though they’d been stolen right from where they once stood.

 _What happened? What did this?_ As he follows the beat-up tail of the boy’s trench coat, Seven desperately wants to ask and raise the questions that he thinks the boy should hear.

_Do you see these things? What are you thinking? Where are we going?_

His head swims with apprehension, frustrated to the near point of tears at his inability to speak. He's so preoccupied with thinking to yank at the boy's cloak that he doesn't see when he stops. Seven rattles as he stumbles, just barely saved from a fall when the boy latches his hand fast enough to keep him standing. An instinctive _Thanks_ goes unsaid.

He peeks around the boy and spots yet another wall of buildings. The windows are boarded up with no open gaps. Judging by how intently the boy is scanning the area, Seven assumes that they need to keep going in the current direction. _How does he know?_

He swallows down his doubts, his questions. They follow the perimeter diligently, but it’s all the same. Most windows are boarded up and some hide behind the protection of bars. Seven begins to eyeball the forgotten, garbled posters more than he looks for an opening when he spots a translucent thing skittering along the walls. He inches forward and realizes it’s an infant spider.

Turns out there was some life to the city after all.

The boy continues to walk ahead, seeking, searching. Seven isn’t sure he wants to depart the first sign of harmless life so soon. He briefly considers grabbing the boy’s attention just to share his discovery. He isn’t given much time to ponder as the spider darts upwards. Seven’s head jerks to follow its rapid path over a series of posters, scrambling past a dinghy fire escape and into a barely visible attic window.

Seven grimaces. He isn’t looking forward to going inside yet another tomb. He looks back to the boy who’s climbed atop a dumpster. Pale hands are reaching for a ladder just barely out of reach. He dawdles without his speech before remembering how he’d gotten the boy’s attention in the Wilderness. Seven claps.

It echoes lonesomely, almost muted in the great expanse of the world around them. Despite this, the boy hears him, halts his attempts to look over. Seven points above him. There’s a pause of contemplation. Maybe he can’t see the window from where he stood. He thinks to beckon him over, when he sees the boy’s stance relax with comprehension. The boy drops down, braces himself against the rust-splotched dumpster, and pushes. It rolls with a groan with intermittent squeaking from the wheels. Seven hurries over to help.

Newly positioned, the dumpster is still too short for this fire escape. He hears the boy grunt in frustration as his fingers just graze against the first rung of the ladder. He huffs, dropping his hands down, and looks to Seven with an unreadable gaze. Instinctively, the Nome stiffens, until he realizes there are cogs turning as the boy looks back up at the ladder.

A light bulb goes off, Seven can hear it as the boy enthuses, “You can grab it.”

Seven wants to ask _How_ , when the child gently grabs a hold of him beneath his arms and lifts him. Having seen the boy struggle so much before, it’s almost laughable at how easy he manages to grab the ladder. Seven rattles and the boy reluctantly lets go. When he manages to dislodge the ladder from the top, he sees that the boy had still been looking at his hands before startling.

As the boy gets to the final rung, Seven extends his hand. The boy takes it.

\--

The window is rounded and small. Like a child-sized man-hole, except made of glass and planted onto the side of a building. Mono hadn’t seen it at first when the Nome had clapped for his attention, instead following its point to the skeletal fire escape. Were it not for the smallest movement suggesting an open window, he would have missed it all together. Two heads better than one, he muses, though he still isn’t sure how the Nome is able to _see_.

It’s a long climb up the stairs before finally getting to metal rods stapled into the wall that lead into the window. The quiet is only disrupted by his labored breathing and their hushed steps. At the top, Mono slides his fingers along the wooden frame. A notch makes itself known, a divet along the smooth surface. He slips in and leverages the window open.

As he and the Nome slip in, the window rattles to a gust. Mono just manages to yank the Nome over the ledge just as it slams shut. Their rough landing pushes a grunt out of him. The breath he takes in is thick with dust. Dead air.

Blinking rapidly and shaking his head of their jarring fall, the first thing Mono notices are the spider-webs. They’re everywhere, blanketing the corners and falling from the rafters in wisps. Something has replaced this as their new den. Mono shrinks back into the shadows, grabbing the Nome’s hand to urge it to do the same. He listens. The apartment buildings here don’t creak as much as the Hunter’s abode, but they creak all the same to a careful ear.

There’s a skittering noise. More than one, and it echoes around them.

Not alone, then.

There’s movement in his peripheral. Mono turns his attention and blanches to a squirming cocoon of silk. Beneath it, emptied bodies of Nomes. He protectively pulls his still-alive companion closer to him and inches towards the deflated creatures.

Motionless. Gingerly, Mono places a hand atop of one. Paper skin goops on his fingertips. He retracts his hand in equal parts measured disgust and horror. His grip tightens on his friend.

He looks up to the writhing cocoon above him. Maybe there was another Nome inside? He’s about to reach for it when it’s suddenly yanked up. Mono doesn’t think - He jumps for it just as it’s pulled up even further. He grazes the silk - strands of it drift loose - but it’s too late. It disappears into the darkness and Mono lands with a thud.

Internally he curses, distraught.

“No!” He murmurs out a cry. If he’d been faster -- Or maybe it he hadn’t been looking at the corpses, instead -- maybe, just maybe there’d be someone else who was alive. There’s a squeeze to his hand. Mono shakes his head. He should've been faster.

The rest of their journey isn’t as eventful. There are still more Nome corpses scattered about, chewed out and disintegrated, but nothing moving and alive. Mono keeps his own Nome close to him, shivering when a skitter sounded much too close.

There aren’t any other exits, except one. Only, it’s hard to tell it’s an exit. A door frame is the only thing that suggests what it is, but otherwise a glossy obstruction is mounded where an opening should be. An egg-sac that’s way too large.

Mono purses his lips. Hesitantly, he presses his hand against it. It’s warm and fuzzy. Bolder, he enlists his other hand and begins to push. It refuses to move, doesn’t even bend to the pressure despite its seemingly supple exterior. Something convulses underneath and Mono recoils with a disgusted grimace. _Gross_.

Wiping his hands against his coat, he scans the tendrils that connect it to the door frame. He slides a finger pad over the nearest one. Silky like the rest of the webs, but taut like rope. He tries his fingernail against it, but the adhesion is stubborn and unrelenting.

Mono glances back to the window where they’d come from. The wind that’d pushed it closed was howling now. The panes quivered in their frames. They weren’t going out back that way, it seemed.

A quiet clap. Mono looks over and the Nome is pointing up. Lodged on the ledge of a fallen-through floor is an axe.

There’s no obvious way up. The two of them look around.

Mono spots a TV set tied to rope next to a gap in the floorboards where the wood has rotted through. His eyes follow the rope’s length upwards where it rounds over a rafter and drops back down. Tentatively, Mono loops his wrist around this free end. He tugs at it experimentally, then looks over to the Nome who has stationed itself next to the television. Mono stifles a small, uneasy giggle at it gazes at its warped reflection.

“Pst, hey,” He calls. The Nome straightens attentively. He points at the set, and whispers, “Push it down.”

The Nome obliges and Mono flies up at a dizzying speed. It’s almost delightful, if not also terrifying. His ascent skids to a stop. When he looks around, he finds that the axe is right besides him. Mono swings his legs and bridges the gap, coughing as he lands. It’s dustier up here.

The handle just comes in contact with his palm when he hears that same static from before. The boy looks up. In the inky gloom further ahead, there’s another glint and something fuzzy. Mono squints and approaches it. Another after-image, except it sizzles and hisses to his presence and the edges distort to its own garbled noise. Unlike the previous one, this one is angry - the energy emanates with an agitated aura. Mono hesitates, grimacing.

He can hear it. _Why did I die?! It isn't fair! It isn't fair! Those stupid adults!_

"Hey," He whispers, "Are you okay…?"

He doesn’t know if it hears him because it just _screams_ in distorted syllables. Mono almost keels, has to grip his head from the headache pounding alive.

_It's not fair!!!_

It isn't, Mono thinks. How to console it, he's out of ideas. Had he been in its place, he thinks…

Well, maybe he isn’t thinking as he slides his arms around it in a timid sort of hug.

Another wail. Mono can feel electricity skitter across his skin as the ghost slips through his arms and into him. He feels its rage, its hurt, its despair. Mono could weep. Mono could scream. He wanted to break things, and hide in a corner and cry.

His heart felt like it weighed a thousand kilograms.

When the turbulent storm passes, he hears a crackling whisper, weak and broken. _Thank you._

Mono sniffles and scrubs away the angry tears. _Don't be mad anymore. It'll be okay._ He pats at his thundering heart, hoping the ghost had heard him. As he looks down, he sees that in its place remained a lighter.

Mono tests it and the light awakens with a luminous burst, expelling the darkness around him. Had this been the child's last source of comfort as it lived its final days as a forgotten ghost? Mono frowns, reluctant to put it away, but there was no sense in wasting it. He clicks it closed, feeling guilty like he was snuffing out something precious, and places it carefully in his pocket.

Mono returns to the axe. He hoped he hadn’t kept the Nome waiting too long or worried it. Does he explain himself? Would it think he's crazy? Would it leave him? He wonders as he yanks the axe free. Mono peers down, relaxing slightly as he sights the Nome waiting with an impatient cross of arms.

"Watch out," he calls to it. It looks up and takes a few steps back. Satisfied, Mono let's the axe slip from his hands and down to the next floor. The head falls blade first with a full sounding thud.

Mono looks around. The way up was one thing, the way down was another.

He eyes the rope with a frown. Backing some steps, he gives himself a running start as he leaps and grabs the same free-hanging rope. The forward momentum sends him towards the other end attached to the tv and Mono reaches out to grab it, too. Quickly, he ties the two together and descends hand beneath hand down to the original floor.

Feet touching floorboard, Mono finds the Nome hanging freely off the axe handle. The boy giggles quietly, gently replacing the Nome's hands with his own. Gravity had sunk it in decently, but a hefty yank is enough to haul the blade free.

The Nome rattles. Mono tenses. There's a skittering noise behind him, much louder than all their previous ambience. A hiss that was more tangible and fear-striking than any after-image could muster. Mono grabs the Nome and flings the both of them to the side.

The ground shakes. Mono breathes shakily as a giant spider turns in the place where they'd stood.

It hisses, screams, and spittle flings free from its maws. A droplet splats onto Mono’s shoulder. He screams. It’s like molten lava - burning and _threatening to eat him alive_. Tears blur his vision. He narrowly misses a spindly limb to his chest with a blind roll to the left. His arm trembles. It feels like it's going to fall off as he hoists the axe into a downward arc.

He misses anything _vital_ , but there’s a _crunch_ where a leg becomes severed. The spider doesn’t like that. Oh, no, not at all. It screeches and stampedes forward, needle like leg stabbing into the floor one after the other as its venomous spit scatters in the air. Mono blindly reels backwards. His back hits the wall. _Oh no_.

Exhaustion and fear lends itself to desperation. He swings the axe to maintain some form of distance. _Stay away. Stay away!_

The spider idles, five legs seeming to drum like impatient fingers. Its eyes glint, watchful. It’s waiting, Mono realizes. He hisses, whimpering, as his arm spasms in pain. The spider leans forward. Mono rams the axe back down on the floor again, but it doesn’t seem to dissuade the predator as much as it did before. He shudders in a breath. _It knows_.

There’s a rattle behind it. Mono’s stomach drops. The Nome!

The spider jerks around just as the Nome leaps onto it from the rope contraption from before. In its hand, a splinter of wood, which it jabs into one of many eyes. The spider screeches. Venom goes everywhere.

Mono sucks in a desperate breath and hoists the axe into a horizontal swing. There’s a series of snaps as three more legs come off clean. He stumbles as the axe’s weight drags him along, blinking blearily to see the Nome be shaken off and into a corner globbed with webs.

Predator becomes prey. The creature cowers as it drags itself backwards into the shadows. Mono watches it, stance straightening into something more lax as the paradigm shifts to his favor. They're _safe._

His breath hitches. Static begins to stuff his head. A child is screaming, yelling in tantrum, _It’s not fair!_

He curls his fingers around the axe’s handle and walks to cover the spider’s backpedalling pace with deliberate, measured steps. The voice weeps, _it's not fair._

The axe noisily drags behind him like stone.

Spindly legs stagger and struggle to find purchase along a rotten-through hole. The spider hisses. _Stay away. Stay away!_ Weakly, it jabs its leg towards him.

Mono looks at it. His entire body tingles with an energy that isn't his own. He flexes his fingers on the axe, eyes locking with the arachnid’s many. It seems to come to an understanding as it roars with a last-ditch indignance and lunges forward.

Mono drives the axe into its exposed torso. His weapon remains caught in its flesh, and he has to prop his foot against it to wrench it free. The spider's rapid moving limbs slow and curdle as Mono manages to kick it off the axe and into the hole it'd been cornered against earlier.

He releases a breath that he hadn’t realized he was holding and collapses his weight against the axe. Rapid footsteps approach and Mono looks up to see the Nome waddling up to him with hovering hands.

The boy shoves a hand beneath his bag, dragging his sleeve against the sweat of his brow.

"We're really lucky," He croaks with a pallid smile he knows the Nome won't be able to see. It makes a garbled noise in response.

Mono whimpers as he pushes himself up against his makeshift cane. His feet sway, a little unsteady. With the adrenaline fading, his arm was burning hotter than ever and he felt the oncoming crash of fatigue like a deer caught in headlights. Squinting through the haze of his own mind, Mono forces himself to the egg-sac from before.

He steadies himself and takes aim. Ramming the axe down, the tendrils bend flexibly to the hit. The boy grunts, perplexed. Frustration bleeds through as his arm cries out in throbbing agony. He slams the axe into the sac which eats the impact as well as its tendrils, almost consuming the head entirely into its milky flesh.Tears prick at his eyes, breath punched out of him. _It hurts._

He braces himself against his knees to catch his breath. Mono remembers the lighter. His hand pats to his pocket and he fishes it out. The flint sparks beneath his thumb, flaring to life. Briefly, he relishes in its miniscule warmth before putting it to the sac's tendrils. It takes a second, but smoke begins to waft with the scent of burning hair. It blackens, then snaps free from the wood and curls to the main mass.

Mono continues with the rest. There’s a scream as the sac spasms and tears open. Small spiders spill out of it in waves. They’re underdeveloped and pale, limbs spastic and twitching. Mono grimaces in disgust. _Gross._ He pockets the lighter and plants his hands firmly against the sac. It takes his whole body weight to shove it to the side. It tumbles freely, its innards gushing out like a torn bag of sand.

With a weak inhale, Mono grasps the Nome's hand and they slip through the door frame.

\--

Seven had thought that the only Nomes that had escaped the Maw were the ones in the Wilderness. Having seen the bodies to the contrary, he now knows otherwise. How did they get there? Had they escaped the Maw when it docked during its mobid golden age of operation? Were there simply other Nomes that existed outside of it? Following this boy, Seven can only count the questions that continued to backlog his mind.

The fight had been a gnarly thing. But there’d been something frightening as the boy had approached the Spider in its last moments. Something menacing. His doubts begin to resurface, but he also remembers the boy’s protective hand as they’d traversed the attic. His mind was sticky with its own spider-webs it seemed and it took some struggling to be rid of the preoccupation.

Unluckily, reality demanded his attention.

The boy staggers. His movements are hunched as he grips at his arm and seems to only be able to move forward with the support of the wall. Unlike before, Seven is resolute as he decides, no. They needed to stop.

“Wha..?” Is the tired response when Seven simply stills and the boy is forced to a halt. He tugs on Seven confusedly, but the Nome refuses to move. Seven shakes his head. Tightening his own grip, he takes the lead to his own pace. The boy doesn’t protest.

They make it to a set of _actual_ stairs that lead to the ground floor. Seven sits the boy down at the base of it, yanking off the jacket and revealing the other’s arm to survey the wound. It’s red and angry, scarring pink at its edges like a burn. The boy’s skin glistens feverishly. Beneath him, the child flinches and shakes. Seven mentally frowns.

This wasn’t any good. _They needed to stop._

He rolls the sleeve back down. He points at the boy then to the stairs. Makes a stop sign with his palm before gesturing to himself and to the door.

The boy doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t even tilt his head. Seven doesn’t know how to interpret this, or if the boy is even paying attention underneath that bag of his. He repeats the action for one last extra measure before taking a step towards the door.

The boy immediately moves to stand, but Seven plants a firm hand on his chest. _Stay_ . He points to the wound, then the door. _I’m going to get help._

There’s only the tilt of the bag as the holes follow his gesture. When the boy finally sags in seeming resignation, Seven takes it as understanding, but the boy’s hand latches onto Seven’s before the Nome can leave. There’s silence - a simmering hesitation. Seven tilts his head.

The boy finally speaks.

“You’re… coming back, right?” He seems to struggle with his words, wracked with anxiety as his eyes anchored to the floor. The bag tilts up. Seven is met with the bag’s holes as the other’s voice cracks, “You’ll come back?”

Seven stills, all his doubts from before seeming to maliciously snicker at himself now that the boy near begs for him to stay. He almost forgets to nod, and it’s a slow thing. He can’t promise anything, but he can affirm intentions, right?

The boy seems to process this. Maybe he doesn’t believe him. Seven isn’t sure if he believes himself, but the boy slowly loosens his hold on his hand. Seven takes it as permission to go.

As he steps on the threshold between building and the city, Seven casts a final glance back. The boy sags against the stairwell post, crumpled like a beat-up doll with his knees to his chest. It’s the same posture he’d held when they were asleep on the raft. He suddenly seemed smaller despite their height difference. Seven hopes the boy is napping.

As he turns back to the pale light, he thinks, _Yeah._ _I’ll be back._

_..._

It’s more harrowing alone. Seven hadn’t realized how quickly he’d become accustomed to partnership as a luxury. Noises seemed larger, more dangerous. Without a constant presence to his back, he felt exposed. To compensate, he travels along the walls as closely as he can. At least this way, nothing can jump him from one direction, he thinks.

The City is much too large, but it’s less claustrophobic than the Maw. He has to keep mental notes to himself as he passes four-ways, three-ways, and two-way splits in his path. What a convoluted place, he thinks. Almost like it’s trying to make you lost. Consume you in a different way.

Eventually, there’s a wide window to a building. Seven internally frown as he sights his own reflection. He’d been so close on his attempt. His fortune favored him enough to see the day the Maw would become defunct by a dangerously bright, yellow force. Just not enough to leave him with his body. Shoving his self-pity aside with a childish petulance, the Nome leaps up onto the ledge.

His balance wavers and he scrambles his arms in circles to re-orient himself back into the wall. He lands into the window gracelessly. His head throbs. Seven huffs a Nome gurgle.

It’s a convenience store. Dark, without electricity. It makes it harder to peer in with the outside somehow bearing enough brightness to reflect against the pane with a more vibrant intensity. Seven squints hard past the reflections. The place looks like the rest of the city’s buildings. Decrepit, but not entirely so. Like a time capsule waiting for someone to come back, but in an eerie way in that nobody ever will. Vacated.

As he scans each of the shelves, Seven spots the tell-tale white box of a medical kit. He nearly jumps for joy when there’s a sound of tumbling trash cans crashing to the floor nearby. Seven looks up just in time to see the pearly whites of teeth and register the sound of rabid barking. He jumps, but it’s not enough as he still gets hit by the dog’s fierce tackle. The Nome flies through the air, only just barely managing to stumble into a run when the beast finds its bearings and starts barreling after him.

..

Mono starts to the sound of rampant barking. The noise echoes and trembles against the towering buildings, which seem further away and distant with him perched within this temporary shelter. Blearily, he looks around for the Nome and his heart sinks with a blemish of anxiety to find himself alone. Mono stumbles to a stand and shuffles to the doorway.

Still bleary from the pain, he barely registers that he can spot the Nome he’d been missing frantically sprinting towards him. Mono blinks rapidly as it then also dawns on him that a massive beast is pursuing it. Quickly, he looks around. There’s a wooden board on the floor and he reaches to grab it with a pained wince. His fingers only manage to touch it when he feels familiar paper hands tugging at his sleeve in panic.

Mono isn’t prepared when a force crashes into him. He releases a cry. His teeth click against each other as the floor comes to greet him. He curls up, arms shooting up as his eyes screw shut. He waits to be mauled, teeth tearing into flesh.

A probing, wet snout snuffles against his chest. It tickles.

He cracks an eye open as the dog continues to sniff around, searching. It takes a step back, regarding him, and whines. Mono watches it wearily as it leans upon its forelegs and wags its tail. He blinks, groaning as he pushes himself up. He hears the Nome behind him that’d been thrown further away by the impact eager to regain the ground between them.

The dog spots it, and its drive seems to realight as it shoves its head forward to reach for the Nome. Its teeth click as said Nome dodges behind the tail of his trench coat. Mono shoves his palms against its large head which radiates a gentle warmth.

"No," He rasps, "Don't do that."

It whines in response and Mono can't help the giggle that bubbles out of him. Seven looks at the boy in disbelief.

Mono looks down to see his companion cross its arms behind his leg, pouting, and has to stifle the warmth of laughter pooling within him. Shoulders quivering with humor, he shakes his head and pats the Nome's. "Just stick with me, okay?" He murmurs. To this, Seven reluctantly relents. He intends completely to stick to the boy's side like glue, until he rattles in surprise as he's lifted onto the boy's shoulders.

Seven eyeballs the wounded arm -- surely this had to hurt. But Mono disregards the dull aching. Adrenaline was a surprisingly fantastic analgesic.

The dog barks and whines, staring at its chew toy with distress. Mono reaches out his hand and paps its snout. The wetness of the dog’s nose tickles his palm. "No," he rasps. Despite Mono's best attempt to be stern, Seven can hear the smile in his voice. He’d roll his eyes. For all his strength in dispatching their enemies, who knew the boy had a soft spot for animals?

He pats on the boy’s head for his attention and is surprised to feel a dome underneath the bag. He’s not sure why he didn’t connect that the boy would have an actual head underneath - perhaps he’d gotten used to the coned heads of his ilk and the box shape of his friend’s bag. In hindsight, it was a stupid, silly thing to be surprised over.

The bag rustles in its papery way as the boy looks up. This close, Seven notes that he still can’t see the boy’s eyes. It’s almost like looking into a void, if he stares too much, so he doesn’t. Instead, he points in the direction he and the dog had come from. _This way_.

Mono obliges. He stops only to eyeball the dog which merely wags its tail when it notices his attention. It doesn’t take long to understand that it is in want of ~~the chew toy~~ companionship as it begins to trail after them.

Mono finds a stick along the way, and tosses it with his better arm. The dog gallops off excitedly, returning with a giddy step as it taunts the boy with its new quarry. The boy wrestles it free as best he can with a Nome on his shoulders and a wounded arm. The action repeats as they retrace Seven’s initial journey.

Seven isn’t sure he wants to warm up to the dog, would prefer it’d just left them alone after his near death experience. However, Mono lifts the stick up for the Nome and waits for it to take it. Seven stews in nonaction before finally accepting it reluctantly, staring at the dog that barks and wags its tail with jubilant expectation. He’d scowl, if he could.

Seven chucks it as hard as he could. It only manages to fly forward a foot and the dog has to close the gap from where it stood further from them to retrieve it. Seven sags, hunching sulkily even further when he feels the boy laugh voicelessly beneath him.

It’s an overall peaceful journey. Almost as it had been on their drifting raft here. Seven misses it. But there’s a sort of joy here that’d been missing as boy and dog and nome toss a stick around. Simple and without care. An alien feeling.

They make it to the convenience store in a fashion that felt much faster than it’d taken Seven alone. It probably had to do with the fact that everyone else’s legs were longer than his own. Nothing, certainly, that had to do with the fact that it’d been a pleasant walk overall. Surely.

The Nome points to the window, and the boy lurches up onto his tip-toes to gaze inside.

“A store,” He breathes. The boy looks around. With Seven on his head, they end up spotting the rock at the same time. The boy gently places the Nome onto a nearby bench, grunting as he hunches down to grapple with the stone. The dog paces curiously around, pausing to watch their efforts before planting its sniffer back to the floor.

A yell wrenches out of the boy as he sends the rock through the window. The clear sound of glass shattering shimmers in the air as shards go flying and collapse. It sends both dog and Nome to a start while Mono simply walks to the new entrance. Carefully, the boy picks his way through the glittering glass on the floor, brushing what he can on the ledge with his sleeve.

It wasn’t a thorough clean. There’s a few shards that bite into his palms as he braces himself against the ledge and pulls himself up. They brush against his knees, nip at his feet. Mono turns to help the Nome in, setting it down past all the dangers that newly littered the tiled floor. Mono looks back at the dog that paces outside with a troubled whining. He feels bad, but he figures that they’ll be back out soon enough.

There’s an urgent tug on his hand and Mono reels his attention back to the Nome that points to a medical kit set atop a shelf. He follows it obediently and waits at the base of the shelf as it climbs to the kit and sends it toppling down.

The plastic clatters open. Mono crouches down to a squat as he rummages his hands through bandages and anti-septics. Finally being able to relax, the adrenaline was beginning to wear off again and the pain of his arm was returning with throbs that came in waves. He’s suddenly glad that his companion had the prerogative to have them stop. He probably would have actually lost his arm, he thinks, if he’d kept going as recklessly as he did.

Carefully, he peels off his cloak and rolls up his sleeve. Mono grimaces at the sight. Besides him, he hears the Nome’s feet pad onto the vinyl flooring as it landed back from its climb. Mono looks up, and shly extends a glob of cotton, damp and drenched with the sharp stench of rubbing alcohol. He looks down, wringing the sleeve of his shirt. “Could you… could you do it?” He heats up with embarrassment. He doesn’t think he can trust himself to be thorough - to push through the pain that’d be inevitable.

The Nome releases a noise. Mono looks up and sees that it’s lifted the pad, waiting for him to present his arm. He sucks in a breath and shuts his eyes as he turns to better the Nome’s access.

Mono sees white as he gasps. A sharp scream blooms on his arm. His ears ring, as though he’d just been concussed. He bites into his lip, whimpering as he curls in on himself as the cotton dabs as softly as it can. He barely finds his voice in the agony, “D-do it fast.” His head is swimming. He stammers, “Like ripping - ripping a band-aid off.”

The cleaning motion pauses, but returns with a more firm vigor. Not so feathery and light, but it was definitely faster without the hesitation. Mono feels his tears press into his knees as he utters a whimpering sniffle when the brushing stops. He hiccups as the soft touch of bandages replace the earlier torment, releasing a shushed sound in the silence as it's unrolled and wrapped around the wound. He digs harshly within himself, pursuing his own voice for self-comfort. _It’s okay - the worst of it is over, now. It’s okay._

He’s teary-eyed and motionless as he feels the Nome roll his sleeve back down. He can sense its nervous and worried attention. He inhales shakily, croaking with a stuttering breath, “I’m okay.” He reaches for the Nome’s hand and squeezes, his face still buried in his knees. “T-Thank you.” He huffs, “I just… I just need a moment. T-that was a lot.”

They sit there for a little bit as Mono recuperates. His head was still light and dizzy, pounding in an odd echoey sort of way, but he felt himself slowly ground himself closer to reality as the time passed.

He almost dozes off, doesn’t realize that he had until he’s jerking alert at the sound of the dog barking at something in the distance. Mono scrambles to his feet and peeks over the vacant window sill. There’s a heart-twisting yelp and whine. He hears the Nome crunch over besides him as he sights bug-eyed gas masks on hazard suits grabbing the dog by its legs. They speak to each other in a garbled Japanese that Mono can’t decipher.

As one leaves with the dog, Mono’s breath hitches as he ducks down. Just behind their partition, heavy footsteps crunch over the gravel of glass. A heavy breathing resounds from the adult, a spotlight from a flashlight casting long shadows over the shelves within the store.

  
His heartbeat storms. Mono finds the Nome’s hand.

The seconds are long, but the spotlight turns. The footsteps recede.

Mono peeks his head back up again, and is already hauling himself over the small wall. He turns to help the Nome over. He half-expects the Nome to tug his hand back as he’s pivoting to follow after the men who’d kidnapped the canine, and is surprised when there’s no protest. He glances down at it from the corner of his eyes as it keeps up steadfast and determined.

They stick to the shadows, careful to pace themselves when the man would pause to investigate the alleys.

There’s a moment when the Nome, too invested in keeping its attention fixated on the man, trips over a can that clatters away. Mono had yanked it behind the corner of the building just as the yellow light careened past them.

Footsteps boom heavily as the man approaches. Mono darts his gaze behind them. A fire escape silhouetted against a dark, dim blue. He drags the Nome over and they climb. His arm twinges - and it slows him down too much. A roaming spotlight traverses the grimey alleyway and along the walls, and it’s not a surprise when it lands on him just cresting over the fire escape. The man makes a grotesque gargle of exclamation as it starts to storm after them. The entire metal frame trembles and shakes at the man’s aggressive pace - it makes it near impossible for the two to maintain their footing as they scramble up the stairs and leap through the first open window.

They topple through, but the man had seen their escape. Hands are shoving the window further open as Nome and boy scramble deeper into the building. Mono spots an open vent and veers a directional change with the Nome in tow. They crash through it as they hear footsteps skid to a halt behind them. They, however, don’t get the same luxury as their forward momentum carries them down a hole. Seven, in his blind panic, is briefly reminded of his first encounter with the boy in the Hunter’s cabin before he crash-lands on top of said boy who grunts beneath him.

Seven grimaces out a wordless _Sorry_ as he slips off of him and offers his hand like he had then. The boy takes it and Seven is surprised to feel the weight as the boy takes some of the support. It’s probably exhaustion, but he wonders if the boy has come to trust him enough to do it.

He looks around. It’s another vent, like any other. Nothing interesting, save the grate a few feet ahead shining slitted, dim light. The two of them inch towards it and peer down. There are boxes strewn and stacked about everywhere. There’s one particular tower beneath seated next to a desk, allowing a perfectly convenient way down. Together, they lift the grate, and do just that.

Atop of the desk, Seven tries to read the gibberish kanji littering the paperwork all over it. There’s a scrawl somewhere with a badly drawn tv - a red marker angrily crosses it out. He wonders what it’s all about.

Meanwhile, Mono observes the towers and realizes that they aren’t boxes at all. They’re cages. It’s almost as though they’re back in the Hunter’s homestead, except… these cages aren’t empty or housing corpses. Something rattles a familiar noise within. Mono peers in and gasps quietly as a Nome presses it back to the furthest corner of its prison.

Seven peers in after the boy. A mix of happiness and confusion bubblea up from him. He wasn’t alone! But… where had all these Nomes come from? Were they lost children, too? His thoughts are slammed to a stop as he hears the noise of keys jangling and scraping against the handle of the door. He scrambles, boy besides him, behind the tower of cages.

A gas-masked man lumbers in. In his hand is a remote that Seven recognizes amongst the papers that had littered the desk. He watches intently as the man approaches one of the cages and clicks one of the buttons. The door swings open with a squeal. Carelessly, the man tosses something squirming in his hand inside, before slamming it shut and walking away. As the door clicks closed, Seven tugs on the boy’s sleeve and stumbles over to the same remote placed between two crumpled documents **.**

It’s larger than the two of them combined. Each button that sticks out of it is the size of a Nome. Seven wonders how exactly big these Masked Men’s fingers are, and grimaces as he quickly concludes he doesn’t want to find out.

He watches as the boy observes the remote contemplatively, extending a cautious hand over an oversized button. It sinks down to the pressure and the boy pauses. When nothing happens, he presses another. Nothing. He hums quietly and whispers, “Let’s flip it over.”

Together, they grip the underside and heave it to its side. It falls to its front with a clunk. Seven frowns as an empty battery opening looks back at them. “We just need to find some extras,” The boy murmurs. Seven huffs, one part snarky, one part impressed at the other’s single-mindedness. _Only just_.

They scavenge and rifle through the office wares that lined up against the wall. Paperclips, staples, markers. No batteries. Seven thinks they might need to drop down when he turns to see the boy leaning over the edge of the desk. The boy seems to sense his eyes as he jerks back up and returns Seven’s stare. “There’s a drawer,” The boy rasps. Seven waddles over and, indeed, there’s a handle protruding below.

Before the Nome could even ponder how they were going to open it, the boy was already climbing down. He watches as he fits himself against the inner hole of the handle and braces his feet against the underside of the desk. With a sound of effort and a kick, the drawer slides open a crack and the boy swings into a free dangle on the handle.

Mono gasps as he feels his body weight pull at the damaged skin and muscle. He slams his eyes shut, willing the hot tears away, as he pulls himself back up on the handle. He jumps up onto the drawer’s revealed topside, and clumsily rolls himself over.The desk is shallow, and the boy thinks he could collapse in relief as the crack of light brings attention to the bright, orange flashlight hidden within the dark. He makes haste to screw it open and is overwhelmed to near tears when the removed bulb reveals batteries. Mono tugs them out and hands them to the Nome waiting on top.

Seven feels bad for not being able to properly help the boy. With a body half the size of his friend, he thinks he’s near useless for most of the work requiring strength. He’s glad, then, when the boy pushes the batteries up, that he’s able to assist in hoisting onto the desktop. When the final battery is amongst the discarded remote and gibberish paperwork, Seven peers back down the drawer’s crack and extends a hand. The boy jumps and grasps it.

Back on the desk together, they leverage the batteries inside and flip the remote back over. In their awkward handling, a button is accidentally pressed. They still as a latch opens with a click. The sound repeats, followed by another, and another. Suddenly the room is filled with a cascading noise as the cage doors all swing open. Nomes are tumbling out and it’s a cacophonic sea of them scrambling around wildly. When Mono looks back onto the desk, and his heart drops as he loses all track of friend amongst like-body Nomes.

Footsteps resound behind the door. All movement freezes for a heartbeat before exploding into frantic urgency as the handle turns. Nomes are everywhere. It’s a stampede as they clamber up into the vents and pipes and behind any open crevice. Instinct temporarily possesses Seven - he’s almost moved to do the same as all his peers when he notices his companion’s head twist and turn in desperate search of him.

That’s right - Nomes all look the same if you couldn’t see their shadows. Seven pushes through the bodies that tore forward in the opposite direction, reaching his hand through. He makes contact with the boy who startles and sags in relief in the span of a second.

He tries to yank the boy to follow, but the boy is like rock mired and it causes Seven to stumble. Bemused, Seven looks back to see the boy’s gaze directed on the dog who is cornered between two bright beams. “Wait”, he whispers breathlessly, “ _Wait._ ”

Seven’s blood freezes as he hears a cocking gun. _Oh no_.

The Nome twists its head away - but the boy does something else.

He cups his hand around his mouth and barks a single, forceful syllable.

“ _Hey!”_

Seven thinks this boy has a death wish.

But as the masked men turn, the dog crashes out between their legs and sends them toppling over to the floor. It leaps. Paws scrabble on the countertop as it nicks its teeth onto the collar of the boy’s coat. Suddenly, they’re both dangling in the air, with the boy hanging onto the Nome with a terrified strength. The beast releases a powerful huff, jostling the two as it twists around and bounds aggressively towards the window.

Mono knows what it’s about to do - only has the briefest breadth of time to tug the Nome to his chest and curl up as the dog crashes through glass.

It shatters and the dog resumes its dizzying gallop. It follows the alleys in twists and turns that Seven loses track of. Everything looks the same, but the dog is unhesitating in its selection. There’s a moment where they can hear the men yelling in guttural speak behind them, stampeding urgently in pursuit, but it eventually fades and is replaced entirely by the dog’s gruff breathing and pounding paws.

When the dog finally slows and gently lies them to the floor, Seven is thoroughly jarred and discombobulated from their turbulent, free-swinging ride. It seems that the boy is as well, because his legs give out beneath him as soon as he’s set down. He squeezes Seven around his torso with an arm, placing a steadying hand against his paper bag head.

For all the thunderous action that’d just occurred, the silence didn’t seem real as they all caught their breath. Between all of them, it’s the dog that broaches the silence with a whine as it presses its snout to the boy’s bag. It crinkles, almost hiding the boy’s quiet, breathless delight, as trembling hands reach up to pet it.

It’s only as their heart rate is finally receiving reprieve when, in the distance, another dog barks. Collectively, their heads turn to a far-off silhouette of another canine framed in the pale light. Mono redirects his gaze to the dog who straightens, tongue lolling free as its tail begins to wag excitedly. It barks back before returning its attention to its new friends. Something clenches in his chest, but he smiles as he pats the dog’s leg. The boy whispers, “You have to go, right?”

The dog whines and presses its head against Mono’s chest and the boy is quick to embrace his arms over it. The gentle warmth soaks through his shirt, and Mono wrestles with the unvoiced plea, _Don’t go_.

It’s okay, he tells himself. This is the way things often were. Despite this, a sadness permeates his voice as he manages a quiet, “Goodbye.”

The dog steps back and its eyes lock over to Seven who immediately tenses up. He thinks to skitter behind the boy as it approaches with its _threatening_ snout. It opens its jaws and-- The dog gives Seven a lick and the Nome releases a garbled noise of horror as the action leaves him dripping in drool and slobber. The boy giggles wetly behind him and Seven’s disgust is only temporarily mediated by it.

The dog hurries away, thundering paws on tarmac becoming muted with distance. The two of them watch as it reunites with its packmate, snouts pressing into each other’s pelts. They jump around each other, and with a good-natured bark, they hurry off into the pale, blue mist.

Between the three of them, Seven thinks that the dog was their best navigator. He has no idea where it’d set them down. They may as well be in the heart of the city with nothing to tell them whichever way it is that the Boy seemed insistent on heading. He releases a noise and looks over to his companion as he did before.

But the boy doesn’t seem as distraught about their current situation. No, in fact, his head turns like a compass to a great looming tower with a red beacon set atop of it.

Seven stares at it with a creeping feeling of nausea, like he'd caught the eye of a predator. His stomach drops as the boy starts moving in its direction. Is that where they've been headed this entire time? _What's there?_

Their journey resumes, and Seven hunches his shoulders through the uneasy feeling that arises in the sight of that watchful, red light. He’s almost grateful when they end up against another wall of buildings with no alleyway in sight, preferring these _pseudo-tombs_ over the presence of the eerie monolith.

Like before, it requires them to follow along the building for an entrance. Unlike before, there aren’t any fire escapes to clamber onto. Instead, what they find is a wall with a crevice, crudely boarded with wood that they yank free.

With Night upon them, the interior of the apartment is gloomier than ever before. There’s a mist in here --

Seven jumps as he hears the boy break out into a coughing fit. He looks over just in time to see his friend clamber back out, barely lifting his paper bag over his mouth as he sucks in gulps of fresh air.

Seven rattles in confusion as he retreats after him, placing a hand to the boy’s shaking wrist.

The boy coughs again, falling back into another series of it. When he regains his breath, Seven squeezes his hand. The boy returns his attention to him, bag falling back into place as he releases his hold on it. Another cough as Seven tilts his head for explanation. The boy's voice is more gravelly and raspy than before.

“Something… Something’s in the air in there.”

That was… well, that was no good. Seven looks around. Maybe there was another way through and they'd missed it. The boy shakes his head as he reads the nome's wandering gaze. "It's the only way through."

Seven _wants_ to argue against it, but he thinks the boy is right. Surely, there are other ways. Maybe they could backtrack and find another route. Maybe they could detour it altogether. When Seven looks back to where they'd come from, his heart drops to see that the buildings have _moved_ and walled them in. He hears a small intake of breath as the boy makes a similar realization.

"The city's alive…" More alive and malicious than Seven had ever thought. Would they even be able to _leave?_

"There's no other way…" The boy whispers in resignation. He noisily breathes in. Seven, shaken, nods and holds the other's hand as they breach into the building.

It’s quickly apparent that they aren’t alone. Maybe they were never alone, Seven thinks. With evidence of the city moving on its own, he’s suddenly daunted by the idea. But in this building, there is not only the tell-tale skittering of more spiders but also heavy footfalls that cause the floors to groan.

It doesn’t take very long to find the causes of these things. As they sneak past a room, a silhouette of a man reveals itself under window light. In his hands a rod that spilled gas from a tank attached to his back. As Mono and the Nome wait for it to turn to pass through, the man releases a yelling scream as a monstrous-sized spider looms out from the darkness and snaps onto him. Mono doesn’t see the rest, allowing the Nome to pull him past the doorway gap and against the safety of the hallway wall.

A wet cough. Mono's eyes blur. The gas stung at his eyes as he squinted through the gloom. It’s disorienting and he’s not sure how much of it is due to the gas, but he can hear footsteps clamoring everywhere. They’re completely surrounded by monsters and men alike. It’s almost too much, but he spots a television set as they pass another open room. Mono halts and the Nome almost trips at the sudden stop.

There’s something like _instinct_ as he takes a step towards it. He raises an uncertain hand and jumps when the screen flickers on with a jarringly _loud_ sound. A distorted chime floats through the ruins of the apartment.

_Having a nightmare in a boat_

_Come with me_

_Oh no no_

_He hung, he hung, he hung--_

Suddenly the footfalls all mobilize and converge. _They’re all coming_ and Mono allows the Nome to drag him into the darkness of an open closet.

There’s a seething presence behind them. Mono hazards a glance over his shoulder, and a million eyes stare back. He releases a strangled noise - can’t help the recoil that sends him tripping back out the closet. He lands with a thud, but the men don’t move, enthralled by the flickering lights in the box in front of him. The spiders, however, are not as forgiving.

A wave of juvenile arachnids flood out after them. They sprawl furiously forward, becoming a writhing live carpet.

Mono hazards a breath - there’s no more air left in him after his fall - and the gas simultaneously burns his lungs and makes him lightheaded. His vision swims as the Nome takes the lead. In the corner of his eyes, he sees the men become blanketed and consumed by the mass, offering little resistance as they seem to forcefully crowd closer to the television.

Shifting his eyes forward, he sees another blurry square plane of light. Vaguely, he recognizes it as a window. Beneath it is an oven stained with age that they’re briefly forced to stop against as Mono hoists the Nome up to the nearest ledge. He throws himself up after it as the thundering sound of _too many_ legs swell behind him.

The Nome is waiting at the top. Their hands clasp as it leverages him up and over. Just as Mono’s knee stabilizes on the countertop, his eyes catch sight of the oven’s dial.

“ _Wait--”_ He grunts abruptly as he drops down to knock the dial into a new setting. Something notches open - the smell of butane fills the air with a hiss. He feels the Nome stumble, surprised, and Mono’s heart clenches with the fear that it’ll _drop him_ but it somehow manages to continue to support a portion of his weight as the boy struggles back onto the platform. When he finally clambers over, the Nome _yanks hard_.

Seven isn’t sure what the boy had been trying to accomplish and has decided that he’ll try to brute-force the slowly asphyxiating boy to the window even if it’ll kill him. _No more detours_ he wants to scream. It’s to his relief that the boy relents, stumbling. But then he stills as they get to the glass and Seven is about to scream _What are you doing?!_

“Wait,” The boy rasps, “Wait--”

The wave of juvenile spiders is almost upon them. Seven sees legs peeking over the oven's ledge. _No_ , he thinks, _No waiting -- No!_

Somebody must hear his voiceless screaming. The window they’re perched against is shoved open by the boy who braces himself against it with a grunt. Suddenly, a hand grips Seven’s and he’s _being thrown out the window_. The boy follows, jumping after him, and they’re both free-falling. Things feel like they’re travelling in molasses as time drags its feet for the Nome. In slow motion, Seven watches the boy recklessly toss a lit lighter back into the mouth of the building. It’s swallowed by the dark.

In slow motion, Seven watches the world roar and erupt into flame.


End file.
